


Theory of Mind

by kleinergruenerkaktus



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Coming of Age, Multi, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-07-27 09:30:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16216235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kleinergruenerkaktus/pseuds/kleinergruenerkaktus
Summary: Ultimately no one really knows why bonding happens the way it does. It's easy to ascribe it all to fate: Nicklas' parents were both professional athletes (fate!) who happened to get the same physiotherapist (coincidence?). There are people who cross the world looking for their bondmate and end up finding them in the next town over from where they grew up; people who refuse to look and run into them in the duty free zone during a layover at JFK. But there are also people who never find their bondmate. People who do, but who hate their bondmate, who try to drown them out with drugs or pain. Even people who claim they have more than one, though nobody believes them."I know, Nicklas," Dr Walter had said with forbearance. "I see those people in my office every day.""Well, I'm not like them. I'mnormal."-A story about Nicklas Bäckström growing up extraordinary.





	1. Smarties

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yeswayappianway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeswayappianway/gifts).



> Dear yeswayappianway, here's a brief synopsis of my creative process for this one:
> 
> me @me, sobbing: please just write some feelgood porn, i beg u  
> also me: no >:D
> 
> I hope you like it nonetheless!

“Hey, Nicke, guess what? Do you know what this is? Hmm? Can you tell me what this is?”

Nicklas is four and three-quarters years old and he knows what that is. It’s a Smarties tube. A full one, judging by the faint rattle-clacking noise when the cheerful woman sitting across from him jiggles it between her long, brown fingers. Her nails are bright blue and very shiny. Kind of like blue smarties, which are always brown inside no matter the outside colour. Nicklas sits on his hands, swings his legs, and tears his eyes away from the tube to make it seem like he doesn’t care overmuch. He hopes this exercise will end in the eating of smarties, but he’s no fool: he’s not being kept in for recess in a small, cramped room he’s never been before just so some strange lady can give him candy he did nothing to deserve.

“Nicklas, what is this? Can you tell me what I have here?”

Nicklas doesn’t talk much. He prefers not to. Mom and dad and Kris and everyone at school are used to it, and don’t expect him to answer questions Nicklas _knows_ they already know the answer to - who doesn’t know what a Smarties tube is? It’s _her_ Smarties tube! But this lady doesn’t know him, and she doesn’t seem to want to move along until she hears him say it, so Nicklas humours her. “Smarties.”

“That’s _right,_ it’s a Smarties tube!!! Good job, Nicke! Now, watch this.”

Nicklas dutifully watches her pop the cap off the Smarties tube, and pour - buttons out onto the table. Ah. No smarties. Of course. He knew it was too good to be true. Grimly, he awaits the rest of the farce, lips pressed together - if she thinks she’ll get him to state the obvious twice after the way she’s just deceived him, she’s got another thing coming.

“Sorry, buddy,” she says brightly. “No smarties, just some dumb ol’ buttons. Those don’t taste very good! Wanna put them back in?”

Nicklas does not. After a tense moment, the lady puts them back into the tube herself. It takes a bit, because the long, blue nails get in the way and can’t find purchase on the smooth plastic buttons, so she keeps dropping them and scrabbling them around. Nicklas sits on his hands and looks on pitilessly. Finally, the last button goes in, and the cap goes back on.

“Okay Nicke, now do you remember what’s in the tube?”

She can’t be serious. Nicklas stares at her - or to be exact, at her blue feather earring - in disbelief. This situation is rapidly going from baffling to insulting. Does she think he’s stupid? He briefly considers revolt - to get up and run out of the room - but she might stop him, and it’ll get him in trouble with Ingeborg, who might not let him out to play at all when she finds out. He’s stuck here until her stupid game is over. The unfairness of it fills him with rage.

“Nicke? What’s in the tube? Is it smarties?”

Teeth clenched, Nicklas jerks his head from left to right and left again. Suddenly, a strange yet familiar feeling blooms inside his head, a wordless voice asking, _what’s the matter?_

 _It’s stupid,_ Nicklas fumes to the friendly voice inside his head. _She’s being so stupid!_

“Nicke, when Ingeborg comes back here in a minute, and I ask her what’s in the tube, what do you think she’ll say?”

She’ll say smarties, Nicklas thinks furiously, because that is what’s _supposed to go in a Smarties tube._ It occurs to him that Ingeborg might be in on the trick. She made him go in here, after all. The room’s little window is frosted, but he can see blurred colourful shapes move around behind it, and hear shouting. They’re playing soccer. Nicklas _loves_ playing soccer, Ingeborg knows that very well. She made him stay inside to play the dumbest game ever. She knows what’s in the tube.

Until recently, Nicklas in a temper was a study in icy, passive resistance, silent and unmoving until they tried to move him, at which point he’d _scream._ In the past few weeks, however, there’s been a change. Nicklas has this little voice now, that he hasn’t told anyone about, but which he privately thinks of as his _trouble friend._ As in: it’s his friend, but it gets him into trouble a _lot._ It’s in his head now, egging him on: it’s never scared of making people angry, and it’s always on Nicklas’s side. _It’s stupid,_ it agrees now. _Tell them._

“What will Ingeborg think is in the tube, Nicke?”

Feeling as though the voice has taken over control of his arms, as though he’s twice as big as normal, Nicklas reaches out and snatches the Smarties tube off the desk, rips off the cap, and flings it across the room, into the door. Buttons fly everywhere. “ _Nicklas!”_ the lady yelps. 

“Buttons,” says Nicklas, half-shouts it, before jumping off his chair and running out the door, filled with exhilaration and defiant pride, like he’s running a race and the whole stadium’s cheering for him.

 ***

“We’re concerned that Nicklas may be on the autistic spectrum." 

It’s several hours later, and Nicklas has been in trouble for some time. He did end up being kept inside for recess, and now school’s out and he’s _still_ not allowed to go outside. He has to wait in the reading corner while mamma talks to Ingeborg.

“We weren’t informed that someone was going to come in and run tests on him,” says mamma.

“Observation, not tests,” says Ingeborg. “As I said, we’ve had some concerns. Tove Svalberg is a developmental psychologist.”

 “We weren’t asked for permission,” says mamma.

“Tove thinks today’s incident suggests that Nicklas has developmental delays. He doesn’t seem to understand that others can have different perceptions and beliefs about the world than him. He gets frustrated when his routines change, or when things don’t go his way. He rarely makes eye contact and he almost never talks. He gets frustrated,” Ingeborg repeats, a bit louder, “and then he acts out, and it’s disturbing for the rest of the class.”

Mamma stands up, so suddenly that her chair skids backwards and makes an awful noise on the floor.

“Next time you have concerns,” she says, “please talk to us first. Nicke, put on your coat, we’re going home.”

Ingeborg is standing too, now. Nicklas risks a glance at her as he heads for the coat hangers: she looks upset, like she might either cry or start shouting. Instead, she almost whispers, like she doesn’t want Nicklas to hear: “He won’t bond, you know. Is that what you want?”

“I’m not discussing this with you,” says mamma in a tone that makes the hairs on Nicklas’s neck stand up. Ingeborg, for some reason, keeps talking, even as Nicklas’s mom aggressively zips up his jacket and jams his hat on his head: “Early intervention is key! If he doesn’t get the help he needs, he’ll miss his window and never bond, do you understand? You can’t just ignore -“

“Goodbye,” shouts mamma as she drags Nicklas into the corridor by one hand. Her strides are so long and quick that Nicklas has to run to keep up with her, all the way out the doors and across the yard. By the time she yanks her bike out of the rack with such force that it sends three other bikes falling in an ear-splitting metallic jumble, Nicklas is crying.

_What’s the matter? Don’t cry_

Mamma sighs. Puts her bag down and leaves the bikes for what they are. She crouches down so they’re at eye-level.

“Sorry, little man. I’m not angry with you.”

 _Don’t cry, don’t cry,_ the voice in his head croons sweetly. Nicklas hiccups, nods, and wipes his nose on his mitten. Mamma's face is very close, her green eyes searching.

“Wanna tell me what’s going on in that big brain of yours?” she asks softly, and it’s like everyone’s brain is a Smarties tube that you can’t take the cap off of, and everyone’s just guessing what’s inside all the time, and getting angry when they guess wrong or when someone tells them and it’s not what they wanted to hear, and the whole thing makes Nicklas feel so sad and lonely that he’s crying all over again.

Well, he thinks after a minute, in which he’s been folded into the soft padded embrace of his mother, and listens to two separate but synchronous voices telling him it’s okay - not _everyone._

“Is pappa in your head?” he thinks to ask later, when they’ve biked home and he’s eating his snack at the kitchen table. Mamma looks up from the newspaper.

“Yes,” she answers, after a moment. “In a way.”

“Does he talk to you?”

“Not…exactly,” she says carefully. She’s staring at him, so Nicklas looks away. “It’s not like talking to him on the phone. But I can feel his feelings, a little. Sweetheart, did you hear what Ingeborg said right before we left?”

Nicklas doesn’t quite remember and he doesn’t care. “Are you in pappa’s head?” he presses. 

“Yes, I think so. He says I am. I am,” she repeats, a little firmer. “Darling, you don’t need to worry, okay? You’ll get your bond when you’re older. Kris doesn’t have his yet, either. You don’t need to worry about any of that stuff now.” 

Nicklas isn’t worried, he’s just…thinking. He hadn’t considered that maybe he wasn’t the only one hearing a voice in his head. The idea that the voice in Nicklas’s head might be hearing _Nicklas’s voice_ in _their_ head makes his thoughts spin around in confusion.

But of course, otherwise how would they know when Nicklas was angry or upset? An incident from the previous day comes to mind, Johan falling and hurting his knee - blood came out, and he cried for ages - Nicklas tries to imagine not _seeing_ that, as he had, but _feeling_ it, hearing the crying not in his ears but in his - his - oof. He heaves a sigh and plants his elbows on the table, head in his hands.

“Hey, little man. How about a nap, hm?” mamma suggests. He stopped taking naps a while ago: to admit to needing one would be pathetic and dishonourable. “No,” he mumbles, then muses, mostly to himself: “Well, at least _he’s_ not my bondmate.” 

“What?”

He’d felt queasy at the sight of the blood, and Johan’s sobbing had twisted something in his gut, but there’s no question it’s different from his trouble friend. On the one hand that’s a relief, but on the other hand he now faces a difficult problem.

“How did you _find_ pappa?” he demands, and mamma whispers “oh my god -“

***

Bonding, as a developmental milestone, tends to fall somewhere between losing the last of your milk teeth and understanding long division. At four years and ten months old, Nicklas is way, _way_ too young. So young that it’s not a cause for celebration, the way it usually is. It’s fortunate that Nicklas hates being the center of attention, and therefore doesn’t really care that mamma doesn’t make the traditional cookies with the icing in two colours, for him to hand out at school.

They do mark the occasion at home. Nicklas gets to decide what’s for dinner, and his parents and Kris (who was only briefly put out that Nicklas had beat him at something) sing to him over dessert, like it’s his birthday. Nicklas glows under the unexpected shower of affection, and thinks of his friend - his _bondmate_ \- as hard as he can, hoping he can share the feeling with them a little.

The next day after school, mamma takes him to a store filled with bond candles and trinkets and stuff, and lets him pick out a candle-holder to put in his room. Or, well, that’s what she promised going in, but then she vetoes all of Nicklas’s choices, which tend towards large shiny candelabras with lots of decoration, because Nicklas might knock it over and cause a fire. That nearly leads to a thunderous tantrum until he’s distracted by a small clay tea-light holder, sitting half-hidden on a side table full of engraved copper bells. It has two bird silhouettes in it, in coloured glass: one red and silver, one blue and gold. Despite his anger, a part of Nicklas abruptly splits and runs off to admire it.

 _That one?_ Nicklas thinks back, just to be sure. He picks it up with exaggerated care, and cradles it in his palms, so they can both feel the weight and the texture.

 _That one_ , his bondmate confirms, pleased and satisfied.

“This one,” Nicklas informs mamma, who has one hand on her hip and the other one massaging the bridge of her nose, and the store clerk, who came their way around when Nicklas began to raise his voice, and now has his fingers reaching toward him like he wants to pluck Nicklas’s bond candle right from his hands. Nicklas takes a step back and clutches it protectively against his chest.

“I’m glad,’ says mamma, sounding anything but. “Nicke, hand it over, he needs to ring it up.”

Nicklas will do no such thing. “It’s for him?” asks the clerk. “Isn’t he…”

“A bit young, yes,” says mamma. “As you can see, the mood swings are delightful.”

“Ah yes, the mood swings,” nods the grey-haired specialist they go all the way to Stockholm to see two weeks later, which, his secretary had made a point of stating, is _quite_ the upgrade from his usual three-month waiting list, but Nicklas’ age makes him a priority. On the car ride over, pappa quips that since Nicklas is several years ahead of everyone else, shouldn’t there be less of a rush instead of more?, but mamma disagrees. She doesn’t say anything, but maybe in her head because a moment later pappa says “sorry, I -“ and mamma says “Hm-hm,” quiet and sweet, and in the backseat Nicklas relaxes and goes back to tuning them out.

“They’re normal?” asks pappa. “I mean, he’s four, we figured they were normal, it’s just hard to tell right now what’s just _him_ , you know, and what’s maybe his bondmate riling him up.”

“My bondmate calms me down,” Nicklas suddenly interjects, a little crabby, from the play corner in the specialist’s office. He doesn’t particularly mind them talking about him while he’s pulling the hair pieces off every single Lego person in the box, but he won’t abide untruths, least of all about his bondmate, on which _he_ is the only expert in the room, obviously.

His mamma has the audacity to _laugh_. “No they don’t. They really, really don’t.”

“Hold on a second,” the specialist tells her, and then asks Nicklas: “What do you mean?”

Together, they figure out that when Nicklas says _calm_ , he means _not upset_ , and when mamma says _calm_ , she means _not excited_ , which Nicklas can concede is not something his bondmate ever makes him. His bondmate, they establish after some experimental role-play with stuffed animals from _Winnie the Pooh_ , feels a lot like Tigger. Nicklas makes him bounce wildly across Doctor Walter’s desk to demonstrate, sending papers flying and picture frames toppling.

“Nicke,” sighs pappa.

“It’s okay,” says Doctor Walter.

“I didn’t really bargain for a whole other, long-distance, invisible preschooler to parent,” mamma says haltingly. Nicklas looks up at her tense, unhappy face and stops playing. Tigger lies limp on the desk between them, legs akimbo. 

“Bonding is a challenge for any parent, at any age,” Doctor Walter says kindly. “To be frank - and there’s no way to be sure of this until they meet - I suspect that Nicklas’ bondmate might be a few years older than him, actually. Just based on how advanced he seems in certain areas.” 

“Nicklas has always been smart,” pappa protests. 

“I don’t doubt it,” Doctor Walter reassures him. “I actually meant in terms of his social cognition. Nicklas seems able to reason about other people’s thoughts and feelings at a level that’s very mature for his age.”

“You mean, theory of mind?” asks mamma. “His teacher said he didn’t have that yet.”

Doctor Walter actually laughs out loud at that. “It may be difficult to see past the mood swings sometimes, but I promise you: if there’s one thing Nicklas doesn’t have trouble with, it’s theory of mind. Our challenge now is actually to help him use it less, not more.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NERD ALERT: The "Smarties" test described in this chapter is a so-called 'false belief' task, a classic tool in child psychology used to assess whether a child has Theory of Mind: that is, can a child reason about their own mental state vs the mental state of others? A neurotypical four-year-old usually can; younger and in particular autistic children tend to fail this task, though the use of false belief tasks as a measuring stick for autism is increasingly being criticized. (e.g. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/chwe/austen/bloom.pdf)  
> I am not a child psychologist and none were consulted in the writing of this chapter, so please forgive/point out any mistakes! Also, my characters' false beliefs are not my own (haha) - Ingeborg's assertion that an autistic Nicklas might never bond, i.e. find love or true connection, is ableist and refuted in a later chapter.
> 
> Some SPAG-related notes - yes, really - are that I know the proper way to write it would be "bond mate", but I love compound nouns and hate unnecessary spaces, so in here I spell it "bondmate". Also, I have opted to use the main characters' passport names for the the third person perspective, not their 'family' names. It just felt right for some reason.


	2. Light

Life goes on. By the time Kris gets his bond (in the usual manner: via a series of increasingly vivid dreams that, one morning, leave him with a look in his eyes that doesn’t fade) the Bäckström household’s copy of _Bond in Bloom_ is dog-eared and cracked along the spine. As Nicklas grows, he learns to treat the Tigger in his head like a compelling TV-show, the emotional flashes of which have no bearing on his own reality. Occasionally, though, there’ll be a thrilling moment of synchrony, when what is going on in their respective lives lines up like a musical octave.

It happens mostly with very mundane things. Brushing teeth (“Nicklas, you’ve already done that side”), eating, walking. One time when Nicklas is drawing with crayons, his hand starts tracing out shapes that might be letters - he’s not sure, they haven’t started reading yet, he’s still in förskola - they _look_ like letters, though, and he’s pleased, showing off his work to the girl sitting beside him, but all she says is “what does it say, then?” and he doesn’t know. So he balls up the paper and trashes it. 

But the best times, the _best times_ , are when he’s skating.

Theirs is a life lived outside. Swedes in general live by the creed that there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing; Nicklas’ family treats their house as a place to sleep and store their ever-expanding hoard of sports equipment. When they’re not at school, Kris and Nicklas are playing outside, on the soccer field or in the street with the other neighbourhood kids. And in November, when it’s finally cold enough, pappa puts the tarp down in the field next to their house and turns on the hose, and for five dark, freezing months Nicklas can play as much hockey as he wants. Which is to say: as much as he can manage before his legs literally won’t hold him up anymore.

Kris and his friends are a few years older, but they let Nicklas play with them because Nicklas becomes a huge pain in the ass if they don’t. It means no one will let him keep the puck for long. They have the reach on him, and yell at him if he doesn’t pass; so he passes. At the rink, his coach makes approving noises and plays him at C. He likes it: being in the middle, seeing the whole ice, being the go-between for defence and offence, setting up teammates. He doesn’t feel much need to score. 

Most of the time.

They’re out on the backyard rink, and it’s so cold that Nicklas can’t feel his hands and feet. Overhead the sky is black and empty. They’ve been playing for god knows how long, the score is in the double digits on both sides - they’ll have to pack it in soon - and Nicklas has the puck. Or there’s a game at the rink, Valbo against Borlänge, and they’re losing by three, and Nicklas has the puck. Or he’s just by himself after school, Kris at practice, parents at work, amusing himself. And suddenly, he’ll feel it: the marvellous, indescribable _rightness_ of his legs striding in synch with his bondmate’s, the doubled weight of the puck on his stick, the intoxicating push-and-pull of both of them doing the same thing at the same time, and if Nicklas wanted to he could steer them in one direction, but more often than not he’ll let himself be carried along in the current of his bondmate, half-scared, half-thrilled by the way he feels at once powerful and overpowered.

Like the time with the smarties, his bondmate makes him feel like he's all alone in the centre of a stadium, twenty thousand people roaring his name, floodlights trained on him - and it’s good, it’s _right_ , it is his right. Nicklas’ll feel large and strong and predatory, not in his usual lurking, calculating way but with a fierce desire to shoot, score, _conquer._ He’ll go a little berserk. It often gets him yelled at. But as he gets ready for bed he’ll light his bond candle, sitting on his dresser at a safe distance, and think _you were there today, we had fun together, sleep tight._

“My bondmate plays hockey,” he confides to pappa as he’s being tucked in.

“I’m sure they do!” pappa replies with a big smile. When he leaves, and switches off the big light, Nicklas falls asleep to the friendly golden flicker of his little candle in the dark.

***

One morning, not long after his eighth birthday, Nicklas wakes up with tears streaming down his face.

There seems to be no way to make it stop. “Was it a nightmare?” asks mamma, wiping at his face with her hands, fruitlessly trying to soothe. Nicklas nods, then shakes his head, then shrugs in a kind of exhausted, hopeless way, all the while crying without knowing why.

He stays home from school that week, on the couch with his duvet like he’s sick. He feels sick; weak and nauseous with sadness. The constant crying gives him a headache. Watching cartoons distracts him for a few minutes at a time, and then the cold, choking grief rolls through him again like a black wave. He eats little and sleeps a lot.

On Doctor Walter’s advice, he goes back to school the next week. Routine helps, he says, in the absence of anything material they can do to lessen the pain of a catastrophic event on the other end of a bond. Nicklas has no access to his bondmate’s articulated thoughts or memories, so they never do figure out what happened, but they can take a guess: for months after he woke up crying, he is deeply preoccupied with death, dying, and what happens after. It becomes suddenly difficult to cross the street, as every oncoming car paralyses Nicklas on the sidewalk; falling asleep turns into a nightly ordeal, which in turn leads to crabbiness and tears the next day. The death of a classmate's sibling has him in hysterics for a week. It can't continue.

"Nicke, darling, put your things on," his grandmother says on a Friday night in late January, after she's done the washing up. "We're going on a little trip."

"Is Kris not coming?" asks Nicklas. It's their parents' biweekly date night, meaning he and Kris are having a sleepover on Farmor's pull-out sofa. Farmor lets them have cola, which they never have at home, and thinks that if she takes the remote upstairs with her they can't watch TV in the middle of the night (it has buttons on the back, how has she never noticed?). Usually on these nights he and Kris take a bath and watch a movie in their pajamas, snug and warm under their blankets, and in the morning Farmor makes pancakes and drives them to the rink. Long story short, Nicklas doesn't want to go anywhere.

"Not this time. It's a special trip for just us both." Farmor's already pulled her snow pants on, and her boots. She fixes him with an expectant look. "We won't be gone long, we'll still have time for a movie. Go on, now."

Nicklas considers digging his heels in. But, blast it, there is also the Tigger side of him, that's pricking its ears and wagging its tail: _a special trip? just for me?_ Nicklas has felt precious little Tigger lately; it's been all Eeyore, all the time. He can't say no. 

It's cold and dark outside. People have taken down their Christmas decorations, so now it's just their bleak white porchlights and lights behind closed curtains, orange streetlights and the sickly thin sliver of the moon, silvering the lumpy grey piles of snow and ice that've been shoveled from the road. Nicklas trudges along on Farmor's hand, and feels his brief, Tiggerish flare-up drain away through the soles of his boots, into the cold, wet asphalt. He sniffles.

"It's not far," Farmor says, giving his hand a little squeeze. 

Valbo is small, and Nicklas has lived there all his life. To his mind, there aren't many places in it left to discover, which heightens his surprise when Farmor steers them towards the big, arched wooden doors of the church. It's smack bang in the middle of everything: Nicklas sees it almost every day on his way to school, he's just never been inside. It's at once such a familiar fixture and alien territory that it's never occurred to him to take a closer look.

The big wooden doors have a smaller, rectangular door set in them, which Nicklas finds sensible and a little disappointing. Inside the ceilings are high and soaring, and the light is low and friendly, a little mysterious. It's warmer than outside, but not by much. Nicklas cranes his head around like an owl, spots the stained-glass windows, and half-whispers: "Look, like my bond candle!"

"You're exactly right, darling," Farmor says warmly, then adds "oh, my dear one," when she sees his eyes welling up with fresh tears, because of course _bond candle_ reminded him. 

"Come, let's go over there," she says, pointing at a large frame - rack? table? - near the front of the church that's ablaze with flickering light. As they draw nearer, Nicklas can see that sitting on thin wooden shelves are lots and lots of simple white tealight candles, the same kind he swaps out for his own bond candle every other night or so. They're not decorated, or marked; there's no way to tell who lit them, or who they're for.

"I come here almost every week," Farmor tells him, like a secret. "When it's nice and empty, so that I can be alone and hear myself think."

"About what?" Nicklas asks. 

"Life. Everything," she says simply. "About you and your brother, and your father and mother, and my friend Annika who is very ill, and my other friends who are doing fine. And about Farfar."

Nicklas stares into the sea of tiny dancing flames. He has no conscious memory of his grandfather, who died when he was a baby. But he's seen pictures of him around Farmor's house, prominently on display in the windowsills and on side tables. He looks a lot like Nicklas' dad.

"Do you miss him a lot?" he asks, feeling his throat clog up as the realisation hits him that Farfar was Farmor's bondmate, and that that's what they're here to talk about, because Farmor understands how he feels. He doesn't wait for her anwer: he blindly turns into her puffy, solid body and wraps his arms around her torso as far as they will go. 

Her arms fold around him like a shelter. "Every day, sweetheart. I miss him every single day. And that's okay. I have my beautiful family close by, and when my heart wants to feel close to him I come here, and sit for a while, and light a candle."

"Don't you have your own anymore?"

"It's in the cemetery, darling, with his urn. I light it once a year on All Soul's Day." 

"Are these all for dead people?" Nicklas asks, turning back to look at the candles. There is something appropriate about that idea now: of the memory of the departed casting its light, but the candle white and blank, like a ghost. The longer he looks at them, the calmer he feels. 

"Most of them, I think. Sometimes people light them when they wish well on someone they love."

"I want to light one," Nicklas decides. So they do. There are no matches, but instead a long, thin candle that Nicklas lights on one of the others, then carefully transfers the flame from onto his own. They stand watching it for a while in companiable silence: a quiet in which Nicklas can hear his thoughts as if written in the air in chalk.

"Let's go home now," he declares after a short while. He thinks he's thoroughly deserved his popcorn and soda. His cheeks are still tacky with dried tears, but he feels hollow and clean like a washing machine after the laundry's just come out.

His bondmate nudges him when they step back outside: a deeply familiar there-and-gone-again ripple of feeling, almost coy, like a quick kiss on the cheek before running off. "They heard it, Farmor!"

"Of course they did," she smiles wide at him. "Of course."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few liberties taken in this chapter and the next. I have no idea if/when Bäcky's paternal grandfather died; I also don't know the true name of the cousin Backy allegedly grew up singing karaoke with (I know there is _a_ cousin, Victor Huss, but he's about three years younger than Bäcky and that did not suit my nefarious fic-writing purposes, so I just made everything up. Like one does. In fiction. Which this is.)


	3. Heat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter contains descriptions of a prepubescent minor's thoughts on, and eventual experiences with, sexuality. I've tried to do that in a way that's respectful of his age and developmental phase, and not titillating or pornographic. However, people's mileage definitely varies on this, and I encourage you to skip this chapter if you're unsure.

When he's twelve the new millenium starts, like any other year, without the crashing computers and dissolution of society that people had been afraid of. Nicklas' neighbours had actually stocked up on canned food. "Well," says their son Patrick, half-sheepish, half-defiant, "it'll keep for ages, so either way it was a good idea." Nicklas makes him bring canned pineapple every time he comes over to shoot pucks on their shooter tutor.

Nicklas is playing two age groups up by now. Off the ice, he still doesn't talk much, but on the ice he's bossy - 'dominant', his coach calls it, same coach he's had since he was four, same approving tone of voice. He has to be, if he's going to get anything done out there. He is a) small for his age, b) unfortunately baby-faced, and c) better than any of these knuckleheads with a headache and one hand tied behind his back, and they all know it, so if he doesn't want to be the team punching bag he needs to assert himself. _Gubbe_ , they call him teasingly, old man, for the way he scowls when he concentrates and fumes for hours when they lose.

He'll do his own scoring, if no one else will ("do I have to do everything myself around here?" he'll grouse on the bench, playing it up for laughs), but he still can't outmuscle anyone: for him, the path to success is passing the puck. Passing it in such a way that even the most hopeless teammate can handle it. He and his dad are on the ice for hours working on saucer passes, lifting the puck over obstacles, getting it to land flat every single time. Almost like golf, but with only a split second to aim; it's devilishly hard, and the satisfaction when he gets it right is exquisite.

What isn't exquisite is the locker room. Nicklas has been briefed on the birds and the bees and the general mechanics of puberty, but no one saw fit to warn him that teenage boys _stink._ All around him, his friends are shooting up like weeds, their voice breaking and skin bubbling with acne, growing furry upper lips and adam's apples. And talking about sex.

All. The. Time. 

It's, uh.

He knows about sex, alright? He sees the titty mags on the highest shelf in the post office. He found one in Kris' dresser once, when he'd run out of clean underwear and wanted to borrow one of his. He slept over at Daniel's house that time, and his parents have cable, so they snuck downstairs in the middle of the night to flick through the dirty channels. (All he really remembers is a fat lady with huge, naked, balloony breasts rubbing whipped cream all over herself.) He knows. And he knows what a crush feels like: furtively staring at classmates, a new one every few months or so, and only being able to think embarrassingly tender thoughts about how beautiful and funny they are. But those two things - crushes and sex - are oceans apart yet. Nicklas feels about sex like Columbus must've felt setting out to discover a new route to India by sailing in the exact opposite direction. 

Or rather, his bondmate is Columbus. Nicklas is the mutinous crew.

Nicklas is thirteen and sex is a hideously awkward thing to talk or even think about. The last time he saw Dr Walter (they're down to twice-a-year visits, now, and his mom stays in the waiting room), he spent a good chunk of the consult tearing up his cuticles and feeling like his face would melt off from sheer mortification while Dr Walter explained that, because his bondmate is a bit older ( _"Maybe"_ , said Nicklas, just to be contrary - _"Maybe_ older, there's no way to know for sure." "Indeed."), Nicklas was likely to experience some thoughts and feelings that his own body might not yet be entirely ready for.

"Maybe it is ready," Nicklas had argued, preferring again to contradict Dr Walter rather than actually listen and think about what he said. "Maybe if I'm feeling it it means I'm ready. Like bonding so young in the first place. That's never been bad for me."

"Agree to disagree," Dr Walter said in his infuriatingly calm voice. "Your stutter -"

"My stutter is mmm... _my_ stutter." Dr Walter's theory was that bonding young had made Nicklas overly self-conscious of his own thoughts, which had brought on the stutter. Nicklas's theory was that not everything was about his fucking bondmate. Some people were blind, or in a wheelchair: that wasn't their bondmate's fault either, was it?

Dr Walter thinks Nicklas bonded before he was ready. That his bondmate "yearned for him so ardently" that they bonded the moment it was technically, neurologically possible. Nicklas used to like that idea; it made him feel wanted, impatiently awaited. But the older he gets, the less he believes it. Why couldn't it be _his_ soul that started calling out so insistently, so early, that he bonded them several years ahead of schedule? Why couldn't it just have been an accident, for that matter?

Dr Walter might have studied bonding his entire adult life, but ultimately no one really knows why bonding happens the way it does. It's easy to ascribe it all to fate: Nicklas' parents were both professional athletes (fate!) who happened to get the same physiotherapist (coincidence?). There are people who cross the world looking for their bondmate and end up finding them in the next town over from where they grew up; people who refuse to look and run into them in the duty free zone during a layover at JFK. (That one is its own entire romance genre.) But there are also people who never find their bondmate. People who do, but they have to hide it or their family doesn't accept it, because they're from the wrong caste, or gender, or religion. People who do, but who hate their bondmate, who try to drown them out with drugs or pain. Even people who claim they have more than one, though nobody believes them.

"I know, Nicklas," Dr Walter had said with forbearance. "I see those people in my office every day."

"Well, I'm not like them. I'm _normal_." 

They ended that appointment on somewhat frosty terms. But it was successful in that Nicklas had managed to hide the truth: Dr Walter's warnings were too late.

***

Nicklas doesn't really think about sex; he has someone to do that for him. At completely random moments in the day he'll break into a sweat, feel his belly go molten, the place between his legs grow agonisingly sensitive. Initially, he was alarmed and ashamed by it - was he sick? Was his bondmate sick? - but an eavesdropped conversation between two of his teammates set him straight. And gave him some clues as to what he could do about it. 

Annoyingly, he has no control over when it happens (and it always seems to happen at the most inconvenient moments, during math tests or conversations with strangers), but sometimes he's lucky and he's got time and privacy to just - figure out what feels good. Arrange his body different ways. Let his hands roam slowly, as though across an ouija board. Get in the shower or under the covers, squeezing a bolster pillow from the guest bedroom between his thighs. Experimentally rocking to and fro, stoking the heat. Or lying very still, quiet, to feel it build all by itself, until it culminates in a delicious full-body shiver. It's nice. _Really_ nice. And the biggest, most important secret Nicklas has ever kept, which only heightens the excitement.

Until he's over at his cousin Åke's house during winter break, playing Sing Star. Nicklas can usually ignore it well enough if he has to, or at least wait it out without letting on what he's feeling, but this is awful timing. They're in the middle of a song. At least he knows this one: he can keep singing and not immediately crash this round, even though he mangles the lyrics. The feeling, he realises now that it's impossible to ignore, had maybe been slowly building for a while. He just thought he'd been really into the music.

(Well, that too. He loves to sing, and recently it's become even more fun because his voice hasn't broken yet but Åke's has, so Nicklas comfortably destroys him every time.)

_I am unwritten / can't read my mind / I'm undefined..._

He draws one knee up to hide any damning evidence from Åke and tries to re-focus on the song, determined to power thr-- _oof_. Hnnngh. God, he feels warm. It's really difficult to. Concentrate. There's a verse that Åke has to sing and Nicklas uses it to try to get his breathing under control.

He feels - his bondmate _feels_. Excited, yes, and _really_ turned on, but also - nervous, Nicklas thinks. The same nauseating nervousness he feels before speaking up in class, heart beating out of his chest. _(No one else can feel it for you / only you can let it in)_ And it's only getting more intense - _drench yourself in words unspoken -_ with every passing second. Nicklas can't help but wish it would stop, and not just for the sake of his dignity. What the hell has his bondmate gotten themselves into?

_No one else, no one else can speak the words on your lips -_

"Hey Nicke, are you okay?" says Åke, looking over at him with concern. The song is drawing to an end without either of them singing the final chorus. Nicklas hadn't noticed. 

"I, uh -" Why not be honest, actually? Åke's been bonded for years. He won't laugh. "I'm fine, just. Bond echo."

"Oooohhh," says Åke, understanding dawning and then transforming to sympathy. "Yeah, that can suck. Mine makes me cry sometimes, actually. It's worse because I wish I could comfort her, right? But there's nothing I can really do. I just try to think good thoughts, I guess."

"Uh-huh," Nicklas manages, without listening. His bondmate's feelings are taking up all his attention, like bad pain. His breath is coming high and short; it's like he's hearing a countdown in his head in a language he doesn't speak, so he doesn't know when, but any moment now - 

He rears his head back reflexively, gasping. Lips, warm and sticky, are touching his, moving against his: carefully at first, but quickly growing more confident and demanding. _How?_ His hands, which had been clutching the sofa, come up to probe frantically at his face: his jaw flaps open and shut like a fish with a hook through its cheek, but pressing his lips together or yawning wide does nothing to chase away the feeling of - being _kissed._ His bondmate's first kiss? (Why is his bondmate kissing someone else?) He's not supposed to be able to feel anything physical from them until they've met for real. This _shouldn't be happening._  

"Nicke!" Åke shouts in alarm; Nicklas is fruitlessly trying to twist away from something he can't escape, something his bondmate keeps doing even though Nicke is mentally screaming at them to _STOP-!_  

He cries out, afraid and outraged in equal measure, when Åke grabs him by the arm and hauls him across the living room towards the glass doors that open onto the back deck. Åke briefly lets him go to open the doors, then manhandles Nicklas out into the freezing air and _shoves_ him right off the edge of the deck, into the fresh, deep snow.

It's a blinding, deafening thunderclap of _COLD!!!_ , a full-body open-handed smack. Nicklas yells, his mouth full of snow: the air tears into his lungs with a sharp wheeze, but in that instant he is completely himself again, thank god. He's alone.

"Did it work?" calls Åke from the deck. "Is it over? Come back inside before you freeze to death."

Back on the couch, shivering and bundled in Åke's oversized flannel pajamas, Nicklas can't wriggle out of explaining what happened. Åke, fortunately, has not read _Bond in Bloom_ cover to cover and doesn't seem to realise Nicklas is, once again, a freak of nature. He's mostly laughing his ass off that Nicklas had his first kiss right in front of him, while singing karaoke.

"Don't tell my parents!" Nicklas thinks to plead when the full-body burn of mortification clears a bit. If Åke tells them, they'll tell Dr Walter, who will want to put him in the scanner again for sure. 

"I won't," Åke promises. He's got the hiccups from laughing so hard. "Here's a tip, though: if what _she's_ feeling ever, uh, gets you hot and bothered -"

"Fuck off, Åke." 

" - the snow trick works pretty well. But anything that gives you a shock will separate you from your bondmate for a bit. When I broke my wrist I couldn't feel mine for like, an hour. That was really intense. But you know what also works?"

"What," says Nicklas. Åke's making a very smug, teenagery face. 

"Snus," says Åke, and actually produces a tin of it from his pocket. "Don't tell _my_ parents, okay? Just stick one under your lip. Not _now_ ," he bats Nicklas' hand away, "you'll throw up. Also get your own, this is mine. But try it, it's great. I always use it to focus before games."

If there's one time and place Nicklas never has any trouble from his bond, it's on the ice during games. Because his bondmate is a hockey player too, he _knows_ it. He's long stopped saying that out loud, though: innocent enough when he was a kid, it sounds more and more suggestive with every year he grows older and girls his age disappear from the ice.

Instead he says: "That's nice for you, since you need all the help you can get." And gladly welcomes the ensuing wrestling match to chase away the lingering dregs of a wet, twisting tongue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield came out in 2004, when Nicklas was 16! But this shuffled by on my iPod (yes, I have that song on my antique fucking iPod, what of it) and it was too perfect. I'd apologise for being too corny, but the Caps're certainly never going to apologise for same, so why should I?


	4. Margrit

In spite, or perhaps because of his weirdly intimate connection with his bondmate, it takes Nicklas a while to wake up and smell the roses, so to speak. In his defense, he’s had a lot going on: he’s finished Grundskola, started gymnasium (and picked carpenting, screw everyone telling him he would damage his hands and/or his chance at university should the hockey career not pan out - haha, as _if_ ), and joined the Brynäs junior elite team, which means roughly the same number of games but at least twice as much dry-land training. But now it’s a Saturday in late May, and finally warm enough to hang around by the lakeside, which half of Gävle seems to have chosen to do. Nicklas got swept along in a group of friends that had grown to three times its size by the time they got there, so that now he’s sharing his towel with a girl named Margrit who’d sprinted headlong into the lake, roaring like a medieval soldier charging a citadel, and had come galloping back out thirty seconds later. Her teeth chatter as she thanks him. Nicklas watches her bedraggled, water-dark hair drip on his hoodie, her goosebumps and the yellow submarine tattooed on her left ankle, and feels like a cartoon character who just got smacked in the face with a frying pan. 

She’s three years older than him, just finished her first year of uni. Training to be a teacher. Hasn’t found her bondmate yet, hasn’t tried to. “Not like there’s a deadline, right?” she says tartly. “Unlike my degree, unfortunately.” Nicklas has never not been an ashen-mouthed salt pillar around girls - he so rarely spends time with any, which doesn’t help - but Margrit’s flirting is so straightforward and matter-of-fact that he forgets to be nervous. She draws him into a conversation that feels natural and fluid, about real stuff, not the usual teenage bullshit.

“Sixten said you were really shy,” she laughs at some point, not at all teasing, but inviting him to laugh along at this surprising misconception. Nicklas, in the middle of shedding his juvenile snakeskin, does laugh, already amazed at who he used to be as recently as this morning. 

“My teacher in förskola used to think I was autistic,” he confides. (He only knows this because his mom keeps telling the story of how she found out Nicklas had bonded. He never tells it himself, because that’s a great way to get teased forever.) 

“Why?” She looks right at him, big brown eyes. Nicklas stares helplessly into them.

“Couldn’t make eye-contact,” he manages to joke with good comedic timing. They both laugh, again. He’d worry that he’s laughing too much, but she is, too, so it’s all good. 

“Really?” she asks. He’s unexpectedly touched that she still wants to hear the rest of the story.

“Back then, yeah. I was in my head a lot, I guess. And an active kid. Trouble-maker, maybe. She warned my mother that if I didn’t get counseling, I would never bond.” 

Margrit interrupts him by groaning dramatically, waving her clawed fingers at the sky like an aggrieved Italian _nonna_ demanding answers from the Universe. “Oh my _God,_ that is _so_ outdated. That had to have been way outdated even then! I haven’t even taken my Special Needs module yet, and I already know this! _Ugghh._ So what did your mom say?”

“”Fuck you”, basically.” More laughter. Margrit pumps her fist.

“Hell yeah, go Nicke’s mom,” she says, catching his gaze with a wicked twinkle: _hear the nickname?_

“Well, joke was on my teacher, because it turned out I had bonded already.” Nicklas delivers the punchline with a dry mouth. Suddenly afraid of what she’ll think. Off-kilter from the reminder of the person he’s actually meant to be with.

“Oh, wow,” says Margrit, “that’s _young._ You were, what, five years old?” 

“Something like that.” 

“That must’ve been tough,” she says sympathetically. “Mine came in when I was thirteen. I thought I was gonna go crazy! The last thing I needed was _more_ feelings, you know?”

Nicklas does know, oh, does he ever. “I guess I don’t remember any different,” he smiles. "Always too many feelings." 

"How did you deal with it?"

Sensing an opportunity for another joke, Nicklas shrugs. "Hockey," he offers, deadpan, and shivers with delight when she laughs again.

***

They go slow, he and Margrit. She invites him to one of her matches, and when his season starts she comes to one of his. They wind up at the same parties, that Nicklas now actually goes to. They chat on MSN for short, thrilling bursts before bed. Nicklas gets ribbed and interrogated in the locker room: how did he land a girl so far out of his league? He just smiles mysteriously, even as speculation turns raunchy, stuff about what soft hands and strong haunches can accomplish. His teammates don’t need to know that all they’ve done is make out.

He invites her over in early October. “Door open, Nicklas,” says his mom after an excruciating 45 minutes of tea and smiling and questions about school. He stares at her in horror, but she’s not even looking at him - she’s looking at Margrit. Nicklas grabs her hand and pulls her up the stairs to his room. The door stays open, barely. Thank god Kris is on a road trip.

“Sorry about that,” he says after a few minutes, one hand in her hair and the other under her sweater, on her bare back. “My mom’s a prude.” He is, as usual, _so_ hard. She is, as usual, wearing jeans and a leather belt that she won’t let him open, just like she never touches his flies. She just straddles his lap with maddeningly insufficient heat and pressure, and kisses him until he wants to scream. 

Margrit laughs, a little wildly; drops her face into the crook of his neck. “Your mom is lovely. And she’s right. The age of consent is sixteen, so I’m toeing the line as it is.”

Age of - is she kidding? “I’m turning sixteen next month!” He’s never been stronger in his life, or bigger: 1.78, and the Brynäs doctor says he’s not done growing. Margrit’s strong, and no featherweight, but he’s pretty sure the open door is for her sake, not his.

“And I’m turning twenty in March,” she reminds him. “It’s okay, I don’t mind - just don’t really want to risk getting in trouble over this, you know?”

Nicklas’ face is doing a thing, apparently, because she cups it in her hands and kisses him, long and slow. When they break apart, he asks: “Why do you bother?” 

“Bother with you?” He nods, and she looks thoughtful - he’s blown away by that every time, how he says stuff and she really _listens._ (Can’t get that from a distant bondmate, some goddamn actual conversation. Apparently humans really do need language, emotional telepathy or no.) Three years is a hell of gap, even if it doesn’t feel that way most of the time: he and Margrit are both athletes, going to school in the same town, both still living at home. They have a lot in common. But it hasn’t escaped Nicklas’ notice that cool, confident girls like Margrit generally don’t have a lot of time for guys his age.

“You’re mature,” she finally says with a shrug, as if she could hear his thoughts. “For your age, I guess, not, like, in a boring way. Not like - ‘oh, I have opinions about politics, bluh bluh bluh’ - I dunno. Also, no offence, but hockey players are usually idiots. You actually read a book sometimes! And you’re not an asshole about playing video games with me. Ugh, this is hard to explain. You're funny-"

"I stutter," Nicklas mumbles, face aflame, even though she knows. "I know," she says, "whatever. You are. I just like you, okay? You’re really good at sports, i like that. Also, you’re hot, that’s not unimportant. Shut up, you are. You don’t even realise, it’s cute. Sexy.” 

Nicklas feels like he’s melting into the mattress. Like his _knees_ are blushing. His fingers brush the edge of her bra that he so, so, _so_ badly wants to open. He can’t think of a single thing to say back.

“And you’ve never had sex before,” she continues, softer. “And that’s - hey, no, let me finish. I like that too, okay? Most guys are really pushy about it. For a while I wasn’t sure you wanted to, at all.” 

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“I figured - you bonded so young,” she says, suddenly looking a bit embarrassed. “I figured you might want to find them as soon as you could. Save yourself for them.”

That’s - Nicklas laughs, he can’t help it. That’s really, weirdly sweet, but also pretty old-fashioned. His grandparents did it that way, because of the Church, but hardly anyone believes anymore that you owe your bondmate your virginity. _His_ bondmate certainly doesn’t.

That memory still tastes bitter. Nicklas doesn’t want to dwell on it with Margrit so warm and close. He leans in to kiss her and feels his grin widen against her mouth: “No. I’m not saving myself.”

“Oh thank _god_ ,” she whispers back, and they giggle together between kisses, chests pressed together. “So you can wait a little longer, right? I’ll make it worth your while.” She says it right into his ear, breath hot. Bites at the shell of it. Tongues the whorl. Runs a hand up his neck and through his hair, making a fist, and Nicklas hears himself make a sound he has never made before.

She leaves not long after, citing homework and an inability to keep her hands above his waist. Nicklas’ blood feels carbonated, like his whole body is rising against gravity; his face, when he locks himself in the bathroom, is bright red, blotchy all down his neck, where (he touches the place with his fingertips) he can still feel her mouth. Hair a nest. Lips swollen. The look of himself in the mirror is so shockingly erotic it lances him with lust, knees weak, bracing himself on the sink, mouth dropping open.

Spiralling. Margrit left ten minutes ago. He hasn’t even got a hand on his dick yet. Nicklas bows his head. Considers going back to his bed, to lie down with a pillow clenched between his thighs and - no, too far, too much effort. He can’t think.

 _Please_ , he thinks. _Please, please._

He knows what he wants. Whom he's begging.

Another hot wave of _yes_ , almost nauseating in its intensity, rolls through him; Nicklas scrambles down to the heated floor tiles, gripping the bathroom mat. _Yes._ Hands and knees, like in porn, but what role is he in? Images flit before his eyes on a reel, too fast to latch onto. He feels, it feels so good, whatever _it_ is, he’s still not touching his cock, the zip of his jeans is painful - he moves his hand, pops the button and unzips, then has to fly the heel of his hand to his mouth, to bite, to muffle his sounds. His hips buck against nothing; his back bows, sags, a restless arch; and like a whip cracking he comes - they both come. Thirty seconds, tops. 

Long seconds tick by sluggishly as he breathes deep and even, trying to slow down his pounding heart. He notices his arms are shaking slightly, and shifts back to sit on his heels. The AC drones. Water rushes through the pipes, somewhere in the house. Outside comes the faint noise of crunching gravel, as his mom bikes down the driveway to go pick up groceries.

His fists are clenched on his knees.

 _Leave me alone,_ he thinks fiercely, furiously. _This isn't yours. Just once let me have something for myself._

He can feel his bondmate’s distant response as he’s changing into clean underwear. A mixture of things that make his chest go tight, that he’s too fed up to decipher. Nicklas would like to think there’s at least some remorse in there, but at this point, he doesn’t even fucking know. He misses when understanding his bondmate felt as easy as being Margrit’s boyfriend.

***

“Do you ever — never mind,” says Margrit one day after sex, when they’re drowsing in her bed on a sweltering July afternoon. She’s sprawled half on top of Nicklas: he slowly strokes her hair, enjoying the feeling of her damp, slippery skin on his, their slowing heartbeats thudding sleepy telegraphed messages at each other, their sweat barely cooling in the still heat. He can smell them, ripe and salty, over the soft cotton-sleep smell of Margrit’s sheets, her shampoo. He wants to go again, but not yet. He hums, lilting his voice in a question.

“I just - have you ever,” she tries again, “wondered - I mean, you obviously want to take your bond walk _eventually._ Obviously.”

She waits. Nicklas, unsure of where she’s going with this and therefore unsure what she wants him to say, hums again. 

“But have you - you’re not taking yours for a while yet, are you?”

He isn’t. He made that decision a while ago, when the Elitserien became an option, and after that, the NHL. There is no time to waste now. The winters are for hockey, and the summers are for training for hockey: while others his age are graduating school and planning their bond journeys, Nicklas has time for exactly one thing and it isn’t an interrail adventure of indefinite duration. He’s never said so to Margrit in so many words, but it probably isn’t hard to deduce.

“No,” he says. Then, to make more of an effort, because he’s been told many times that monosyllables don’t count as conversation: “It can wait.” 

Outside, the distant drone of an airplane. Margrit lifts her hand on his chest and moves it, languidly, across his body, running over his flank and belly with just her fingertips as though she’s trailing them through water.

“I think so too,” she says after a moment. Pinned beneath her, Nicklas lies still and listening. “Everyone makes such a big deal of your bonded being, like, The One, right? As like, your lover, your…partner, spouse, I guess. But it doesn’t have to be like that. Lots of people have a different situation with their bondmate. Right?”

“Right,” says Nicklas. He doesn’t know any personally, but in principle she’s right. 

“Okay, so. I was thinking.” She’s moving with slightly more intent now, and it’s making it hard to concentrate. “I was thinking that if neither of us are going to be searching for our bondmates anytime soon…and you’re going to be in Gävle next year…you and I could — well, we’re pretty good together, don’t you think?”

She emphasises her question with a gentle squeeze of his balls, making him huff out a laugh. She hitches up her thigh to press against the base of his fattening dick: making a soft noise of appreciation, he slides his hands down her back to grip her by her marvellous soccer ass, tugs her on top of him and reaches his head up, asking. She leans down and obliges, kissing him, so that he doesn’t have to tell her what he doesn’t know how to say.

That he loves the way she feels, her firm body on top of and around him; the way she looks, naked, in a summer dress or in shorts and cleats, her face contorted with effort and fierce pleasure; her infinite memory for scores and song lyrics but complete inability to retain dates, times and telephone numbers; the way she talks to dogs versus the way she talks to her siblings; her genuine anger about things she reads in the news; her make-up, and the twisted braid thing she does for special occasions. He loves all these things, and he loves her company, but.

How can he explain that he doesn’t feel any urgent need to walk towards his bondmate because they’ve always been there, since his earliest memories? That they’re there now, in Nicklas’s hands and lips as they move against her, in his dick as he presses inside her, snapping his hips with a confidence Nicklas knows is being generously loaned to him, or greedily thrust on him, he’s never sure and he no longer minds. He doesn’t know how to be one person doing things only for himself. His aching, building pleasure is so tightly interwoven with his bondmate’s that Nicklas can’t distinguish between them anymore. It’s no wonder Margrit thinks they’re good together: he comes undone when they fuck, his reservedness crumbling under the force of his bondmate’s enthusiasm, panting open-mouthed, eyes squeezed shut, embarrassing whines that he wishes he could stop, everything. Margrit, grinding down on him with her hands on his shoulders, laughs with delight; Nicklas trembles and waits for the thing that he’ll never tell her, the phantom sensation that by all conventional wisdom he shouldn’t yet be able to feel: that of something clenching in his hair, breathing in his ear, someone between his thighs, fucking him as he’s fucking her, tipping him over from overwhelmed into electrified, convulsing.

It takes him a long time to come down. Margrit, impatient, knees up the bed and lowers her hips against his mouth: he sucks on her clit, his head clouded, two fingers inside her and feeling his own come slide down his wrist, his legs still helplessly spread for the invisible lover racing to their own orgasm, and it jolts him a second time when it finally hits, his pained groan muffled against Margrit’s slick cunt, and Margrit pulls his hair and gasps, “Fuck, you love this, so much, oh my god, oh my god,” and comes, and it’s so much, so much. It’s still unbearably hot when she flops down beside him, but Nicklas wishes for a blanket, a sheet; something to hide under.

“Yeah,” Margrit sighs out, before dissolving into dopey giggling. “Pretty good together.” 

Nicklas manages a few chuckles. He feels his lungs expand in perfect synchrony with someone else’s, like a bellows, like their mouth is sealed on his and they’re breathing into him. He is caught, held, and completely possessed, and he can’t keep lying about it.

With a long, forceful inhale, he wrests himself free from his bondmate’s afterglow. “I’m sorry,” he begins.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a moment in this chapter when Nicklas makes a sound he has never heard himself make before. For your edification, I want to share the link that I based that on: https://youtu.be/TPGxkKii1Zg?t=540
> 
> You're welcome.


	5. Riga

For Nicklas's 18th birthday, his parents give him a really nice wheeled suitcase and the apologetic announcement that they can't afford to come to Kamloops with him for World Juniors. For the first time, he doesn't get anything hockey-related: all of his equipment is sponsored by Brynäs and Swedish Hockey, now.

School has kind of...stopped happening. Between Brynäs playing him full-time and being expected to drop everything for the national team at a moment's notice, it's just not feasible. Nicklas returns to Gävle after Christmas without a medal, but with the personal phone numbers of quite a lot of smiling men in suits. By late February they make, and are summarily tossed out of, the playoffs; by the end of March, Nicklas has just enough time to buy his own suit and mount a stage to accept the SHL Rookie of the Year award before he gets a call from Tre Kronor - newly minted _Olympic gold medalists_ Tre Kronor - that they'd quite like to see him play an exhibition game for them next week in Oslo, please, and to what e-mail address can they send his itinerary? which leads to Nicklas spelling out _nicklback87@hotmail.com_ while struggling not to cry.

So he goes and it's a bunch of the usual suspects, like that lanky Russian fucker who got MVP in Kamloops, but also, like, _adults_ , guys who Nicklas has admired and played against with Brynäs and who are now clapping _him_ on the back and chirping him about probably getting drafted first round. There are more games in Stockholm, and he goes. He gets a call from one of those suits about the Combine and to what e-mail address can they send his itinerary? and Nicklas hears himself saying _no thanks._ And then on April 30, the day after they get shut out by the Finns and Nicklas is cleaning out his locker, he gets called into the coaches' office and told he's on the reserve roster for the World Championship in Riga, plane leaves in five hours, does he want to be on it?

"Excellent," says the team manager after Nicklas stammers _yes._ "Anything else we can do for you, Bäckis?"

All Nicklas can think to say is "I'm going to need new underwear", because he didn't pack for longer than a week. And everyone laughs, but the manager does make a note, and later that day when Nicklas does one final check of his hockey bag before he hands it to the equipment guys, he finds 14 pairs of black boxers with the tags still on. 

"Hej mamma," he says when he has a minute to make a phone call, "remember when I got my first paycheck how you said I would have to buy my own underwear from now on?"

***

There's a moment in every Disney movie, every romcom, every young adult novel and damn near every love song that's pivotal. Magical. A moment when time slows down and the music swells and the hero(ine) widens their eyes or breathes in like a hound catching a scent. "They're here," they'll whisper ecstatically. "They're close."

Nicklas will never admit it, but he's as much a sucker for that moment as anyone. Romeo catching sight of Juliet across a crowded room; Hugh Grant watching Julia Roberts leave his bookstore; Angel rushing to help a beaten-up Collins in a dirty New York alley - goosebumps, every time. And he's imagined his own moment plenty of times, so of course when it comes he's completely blindsided.

Bonds don't work right on airplanes. Something about sealed, pressurised spaces interferes with them. Nicklas has been on airplanes a lot recently (maybe his bondmate has, too?), which he'd thought might be the reason why their connection felt a little weaker this year.

He's pulling his hand luggage from the overhead bins when a voice crackles _cabin doors open_ and his bondmate hits him like an open-ice check. He drops his bag and curses.

"I know you have soft hands, but maybe not _that_ soft, Bäckis," Joel Lundqvist chirps behind him. "Hey, are you okay?"

Tears prick behind Nicklas' closed eyelids. Oh, he _missed_ them, he didn't know how much until their joyous, exuberant spirit wrapped around his chest again. And they're _here._ Somehow he knows, _somehow_ , his bondmate is in Riga. 

Oh god, his bondmate is in fucking Riga. Oh _hell._

"Nicke?" 

"Fine," he gets out. "I'm - headache. Don't worry."

He's starting to think that might not be far from the truth. All at once, everything that's happened lately is catching up with him, rapidly stacking into a pile of bricks in his gut. Now? Really, _now??_ Of all times? Nicklas would never have said that there'd be a bad time to meet his bondmate, but in that moment it feels like catastrophe. 

"Nicke, hey. C'mon, we have to move."

Nicklas shoulders his bag and moves on autopilot, feeling like a ship that's just had a cannonball put through its hull. Every sound and smell, every bump and jostle from another passenger is acutely horrible: he suddenly can't remember when he last had an hour to himself in an empty room, and he craves it like oxygen. Just silence and a door that locks. _Solitude._

But - 

**_!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!_ **

\- when his bondmate's delighted mental shout of realisation reverberates through him as he steps onto the tarmac, louder and clearer than ever before, Nicklas feels his mouth curve into a grin despite himself. 

 _I'm here,_ he thinks back. _I'm coming!_

***

It is fucking impossible to concentrate like this. Ironically, it makes him grateful that they're not playing him: with the way he's constantly distracted by the newly high res, technicolour fluctuations of his bondmate's mood, they'd send him back to Sweden before the prelims were done. Nicklas feels like he's towing along an invisible toddler who he's constantly having to pacify: _Soon. Nearly done here. I'll go looking for you after this practice, this video review, this team lunch, this workout. Promise._  

"Jösses, Bäckis, that's what, your fifth pouch today? You'll rot your gums, kille."

"You're like two hi-sticks away from dentures, man, you have no right to talk," Nicklas snarks back, snus wedged under his lip and sweating from the nicotine rush.

The horniness returns with a vengeance too, sweet jesus. Nicklas opts for low-riding sweatpants and endures being chirped for looking like a gopnik; better than flashing Kronwell with a random hard-on. Solitude, sadly, remains at a premium: there's no time even to find a single-person bathroom to jerk off in peace, much less figure out a strategy for finding his bondmate in a city of more than half a million people. He grits his teeth and thinks _Soon, goddamnit. Wait._

They have a day off on Sunday, thankfully. Nicklas begs off several friendly offers to go sight-seeing with teammates in order to...go sight-seeing. In a manner of speaking. "Catch up on sleep," he lies to them, which is accepted without question, perhaps because he's been so keyed up since they arrived that by now he really looks like he needs it.

He'd actually love to take a sleeping pill and conk out for fourteen hours, but it's out of the question. Nicklas will be in Riga for two more weeks at most, and if he doesn't find his mate now who knows when his next opportunity will be? Or if they will even be here still? So even though his entire body is wailing at him to stay put and crawl back into bed, Nicklas makes himself venture out at just before 8 A.M., large coffee in one hand and a tourist map (on which the rink is circled in red) in the other. He walks until he finds a nice square with benches and pigeons and a statue of someone, sits down, closes his eyes, and tries to point his inner compass.

This is something he learned to do on a week-long teen retreat last summer, where there had been a lot of earnest group sessions on drugs and peer pressure, doing trust falls and making dream collages, but also meditating to 'commune with his bondmate' and 'follow his inner compass.' He didn't take it entirely seriously, if he's honest. Most of that afternoon was spent trying to make his friends laugh and get them scolded by the youth leader. Joke's on him: here he is, barely a year later, sincerely trying to 'commune.'

Opens his eyes again when it feels more like he's falling asleep than any intuitive pull towards the person he's destined to be with. The only pull he's feeling is back to the hotel. This is stupid. There's no way he's finding anyone just sitting on his ass. He gets up and starts walking again. 

Maybe he should have done the sensible thing and asked for directions to the nearest love café; but that would have instantly let the cat out of the bag, which is the last thing he wants, and he also kind of hates those places. Interiors seedy or saccharine, full of people either nursing a drink trying not to look too hungrily at every new person coming through the door, or accosting strangers outright. The one in Gävle was always full of just-graduated, couch-surfing twenty-somethings on their bond walk: a sure bet for a hook-up, like shooting horny, lonely fish in a barrel. Nicklas doesn't want to meet his bondmate in a place like that.

His tired feet eventually take him to the towering Nativity Cathedral on the esplanade, attracted by its gleaming golden domes. If he's not going to accomplish anything today, he might as well see some actual sights. This one's in the information package they gave him when he got here. And who knows? It's Sunday; maybe his bondmate is religious.

It's been...god, _years_ since he entered a church. This one couldn't be further removed from Valbo's sober little Lutheran one: it's Orthodox, a riot of gilded, elegantly symmetrical mosaics, air hazy with incense. There are a handful of other people padding around, with soft echoing footfalls and murmuring voices. Bright midday light pours through the arched windows. Nicklas wanders around for a bit, peering at this or that, but quickly drops the pretence that he knows anything or indeed cares about architecture, and heads towards the nave, where the candles are. 

The Nativity Cathedral is apparently renowned for its icons, he reads on a sign helpfully placed in front of a huge mural full of icons. They all look pretty similar: dour brown faces with gold haloes. A sea of candles is lit before them, a silent crowd of petitioners for intercession. With a thrilling lurch in his stomach, Nicklas' eye snags on one that has two people in it. Two men.

 _Sergius and Bacchus,_ the sign informs him, and then a whole story that he can only distill the odd word out of: soldiers, bondmates, tortured. They were in the Roman army together. For the first time that day, Nicklas feels as though he's been led to the right place.

He's never told anyone, not even his mother, but he thinks - he's pretty sure - his bondmate is a boy. And that's - it's - it shouldn't be scary. No one he knows is actually homophobic, as far as he's aware. He had a gay woodworking teacher with tattooed arms that everyone thought was so cool. Sure, stuff gets said in the locker room and on the ice, but in that way where they all know they shouldn't, really. In Sweden, at least, he thinks no one would give him a hard time.

So why does it feel so terrifying to admit, even just to himself? 

Nicklas digs a few Latvian coins out of his pocket, drops them in the money box beside the candle rack, and lights a candle, as close to the icon of Sergius and Bacchus as possible. Then settles into a pew.

He doesn't know why he's scared. Years of asking himself this question haven't gotten him any closer to being less scared. Before Margrit, he was scared of girls; maybe this'll be the same way, but even better, because it's his bondmate and he _knows_ the- him. Nicklas knows him. What is there to be afraid of?

He stares at his candle, hands folded in a facsimile of prayer. Maybe he had to come here and confront this before his compass could lead him in the right direction. Maybe he just wasn't ready yet before, to receive his bondmate, his real, physical, _male_ bondmate, into his life. 

( _Or maybe_ , he snorts internally, falling out of his reverence for a second, _he's just impatient and getting extremely dramatic over one failed day of searching.)_  

Nicklas is eighteen and he's at the World Cup. He's getting drafted this summer. He's a pro hockey player. His life feels like a train barreling full speed ahead that doesn't stop or slow down for anything, and whether he's ready or not is of absolutely no concern to whatever gods are running the show.

Fuck his compass. If the past thirteen years are any indication, his bondmate will find _him_ , probably after kicking down his door.

***

"Bäckis, hey. Listen. I talked to Alfredsson just now," coach mimes a telephone with the thumb and pinky of his right hand, "and he says he's not coming over. Buffalo banged up him real good. You're in against Russia tomorrow."

Nicklas hasn't played a game in this tournament yet. Nicklas just saw his team get kicked up and down the ice by Slovakia of all people. Nicklas is _shitting himself._  

"Great! Thanks coach," he says, normally, like a normal person who is competent at their job and prepared to go out and play on a line with Franzén and Zetterberg like he just calls that Tuesday. And then he goes to the bathroom so he can sit on the closed lid of the toilet and breathe into his knees for a while.

***

 

Oh, no. You can't be _serious._  

 

***

"Nervous?" asks Joel as they're lining up to go out, giving his hair a friendly ruffle. "Don't be. It's what, 3000 people out there? You've played in front of bigger crowds at Gävlerinken."

He has. And Joel is right to think that that's what's making him shake - he hasn't gotten nervous for hockey in a very long time, even if this is the first game he ever plays against actual NHL'ers. But it's not that.

Nicklas has been doing the math since he set foot in the building three hours ago. The World Championship is being played in two different rinks; Nicklas has been to both, and felt no different. Russia and Sweden were in different prelim groups, and haven't crossed paths yet this tournament, on the ice or off it. The Russians are staying in a different hotel.

Ever since Nicklas got off the bus, his bondmate's heartbeat has been pounding in his throat. _I'm here. I'm here. I'm here._  

Either his bondmate is a hockey fan who has felt Nicklas' presence here for nearly two weeks, yet somehow hasn't come close to him before now - or he's a hockey player who's been as short on free time as Nicklas.

Or he's on the team staff, he mentally amends, dubiously eyeing his own middle-aged trainers and equipment guys. He can't rule it out yet. But he will, oh god. There's no postponing this. Time's up.

"Nu går vi, nu går vi!" someone shouts; they're pushing and shoving each other through the tunnel, amid a chorus of incoherent grunting and yelling, to be greeted with an answering roar of welcome from the crowd.

Nicklas' last shred of uncertainty blows away like dust. The moment his skate hits the ice and he looks up to see the Russians pour out across the rink, he knows. His bondmate is here with him - and they're trapped in a glass cage, one brush of skin on skin away from becoming a viral YouTube clip.

Right. Okay.

The puck drops and Nicklas starts a mental list of players who definitely aren't Him. It's a frustratingly short list: only Malkin, really, who he's played against before. (And thank god for that.) The rest are all new to him, and as long as he hasn't touched his bondmate's skin and clicked that last piece of their connection into place, the hot-cold nuances of the distance between them is not informative, with all of them zipping around in a cramped space.

Russia scores before he can get his bearings, not even two minutes in. Ovechkin, on an assist from Malkin. Nicklas watches him with narrowed eyes as he sails around the corner, hooting triumphantly, with that obnoxious tinted visor tilted up. He may have several personal problems right now, but Nicklas is also playing in a hockey game, and he _hates_ losing. He'll take that enormous muppet down a peg or two.

His brain is under a strobe light, adrenaline throwing his thoughts into desaturated, harsh relief. _skate turn look_ **where?? pass!!** _backcheck backcheck_ jesus, that face, please not him, please _not_ **line change!!** _drink, breathe, who was that guy, what was his number_ \- Time moves in fits and starts; he alternates between zeroing in on the puck like it's a bullet in _The Matrix_ , and coming off shifts with no idea of what he just did.

Play turns chippy in the second period: Franzén and Zäta end up in the box more than once, for tripping, roughing, and hi-sticking, and Nicklas gratefully takes the opportunity to get physical and shut his brain up for a bit. He sees number 8 angle himself by the boards to receive a pass and gathers speed in time to thunder into him just as the puck gets there.

"Unh!" says Ovechkin. Nicklas thinks, _shit._

No time. He fires the puck off in roughly the direction where, if he's got any sense, Nylander is ready to pick it up, and skates off. Finishes his shift on pure muscle memory. Slides back onto the bench feeling like his brain is disintegrating into a million little pieces.

It's. He. No, it can't be.

His bondmate can't be Alex fucking Ovechkin, the 2004 first overall pick for the Washington Capitals, the organisation that has left more needy voicemails on his phone than Margrit before she moved to Uppsala. That is too fucking much. The universe couldn't do that to him. 

Why couldn't Ovechkin have been out sight-seeing that Sunday? Why couldn't he have crossed the square to where Nicklas was sitting with his coffee and his face tilted up at the morning sun, and sat down next to him on the bench, and said _hi_ and _if it please you, may I touch your hand?_

Why do they have to do this here? 

Nicklas swallows his indignance and despair, and goes back over the boards. 

It takes him a couple of shifts, but then he and Ovechkin are on the ice together again, and this time Nicklas deliberately stalks him until Ovechkin has the puck and Nicklas has reason to plow right through him. He finishes his check maybe a little harder than usual, just so that Ovechkin will be a bit slower to recover, so that Nicklas will get a moment extra to be _sure._

"Opa!" says Ovechkin as he rights himself, breathless and - appreciative? Well, he is built like a fucking tank. Hitting him felt like running into a brick wall. It was a good hit, if Nicklas does say so himself.

Not that he usually takes the time out to congratulate himself in the middle of a shift.

Their eyes meet for a split second, and there it is. The Moment, like a musical octave. No violins, no slo-mo, no sudden irresistible urge to tackle each other to the ground - well, ice - and forget everything and everyone else. Just the feeling of walking past a mirror you weren't expecting, a brief startle before you realise it's just you. 

_So that's what you look like,_ Nicklas thinks dumbly. _That's what it looks like when you feel like that._

He looks - big, obviously. Nicklas knew he was big before he ever laid eyes on him in person - he's seen the highlights - but up close is a whole other matter. He has a bit of a unibrow and a nose that's clearly been remodelled a few times. He has all of his teeth, which is something. He has - if Nicklas had to think about it, which is as good a way as any to spend second intermission - perhaps the most slavic face he's ever seen, his cheekbones broad and high, his eyes pale and slanted. Fierce-looking, almost scary, when he's not smiling: impish when he is, which is maybe why he does it so much. Is he smiling now, in his own dressing room? Nicklas couldn't say if he had a gun to his head.

The game ends at 3-3. Nicklas has spent the entire third period on a different dimensional plane; good to know he can still play hockey, or some passable illusion of it, when his frontal lobe is fried. All he can do when he's on the bench is watch Ovechkin roll around the ice like a tumbleweed, vigorously skating in no particular direction: Malkin, trying to make something happen in the last minutes, wastes a few elegant plays on a winger who at this point couldn't find the back of the net with both hands and a flashlight. Nicklas can _feel_ how desperate he is for the final horn. _Soon_ , is all he can think, hysterically. _Soon, really soon._

They queue up for the handshake line, right glove tucked under left arm. Nicklas thinks he might throw up. A few heads down from him, Ovechkin is like a dog losing its mind with excitement.

_Now, now, NOW!_

And at last they're face to face again. Ovechkin is incandescent: it's honestly a little terrifying, sticking his hand out knowing he's about to step right into that fire, for the rest of his life. 

"Good game," he says out loud, managing a smile. And clasps his hand.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh geez some feelings sneaked in here about being bi but also possibly maybe actually being super gay?? ha ha it's fine 
> 
> Also in the course of writing this chapter I realised what a crazy fucking year 2006 was for Nicky! Between January and July, I don't think he had two consecutive minutes to sit down and take stock. I get now why he chose to stay in Sweden another year.


	6. Alex

Alex comes off the ice feeling like a bomb went off inside him.

He's _so good_. It's maybe the last thing he should be thinking about, but it's also about the only concrete thing Alex now knows about his bondmate: his face, his number, and his deliberate, confident stride, not necessarily the fastest player on the ice yet somehow always in the right place, even when his heart's in his mouth and his mind's going a million miles per hour. The only reason, _the only reason_ why Alex let go of his clammy hand at all, why he didn't pull him along on it down the nearest tunnel, or do the proper thing and speak the words right then and there - in Russian, who cares, he would've understood the intent - was that 19's number one priority was to get away with no one the wiser. (Alex would've known that even if he wasn't his bondmate, with the way his shoulders were up to his ears and his eyes, startled-looking under blond eyebrows, darted from Alex's face, to the stands, and back again.) So for his sake, Alex let him go.

Also, his phone is in the dressing room.

The game ended in a tie, so there's nothing to mourn or celebrate. His teammates tromp towards their stalls and begin to strip with equanimity, oblivious to the nuclear storm happening two metres away. Alex tears off his jersey and shoulderpads at top speed, kicks off his skates, grabs his phone, and rushes back out into the hallway. God, who to call first? His mother? George? Ted? 

Ted, though a hands-on kind of owner, never touches the hockey operations side of things; when it comes to personnel decisions it probably makes a lot more sense to call the GM, but the fact of the matter is that of the two of them, he only has one on speed dial. Alex calls Ted.

"Alex! Good game, great goal!" Of course Ted saw the game, at whatever awful hour it must be where he is. Ted doesn't sleep, as far as Alex can tell, just mysterious little cat naps on planes and the couch in his office. "What's up?"

If he tells him now, Ted'll want to know everything. Impossible. "No time for explain," says Alex, trying to slow down and enunciate even though his breath's still coming fast. "Ted. We gotta draft Bäckström." Fuck, saying his name feels magical, like casting a spell, or saying _amin_ at the end of a prayer. 

"What?"

"Bäckström. First round. We _gotta do_ ," Alex stresses, hearing his voice shoot up almost hysterically. "I promise explain later. Please, tell George. No Staal, no Brassard, no other center. Bäckström, first round. Is -" he hunts for superlatives, for words that'll convey how serious this is, "is _maximum_ important, Ted, okay? Gotta go, sorry." His feet are carrying him down cinderblock corridors as he talks, like an agitated banker on the trade floor. For a few heart-stopping moments after he hangs up, he thinks he's lost his way - where is the Swedish locker room? All the signs are in Latvian. Where is everyone? 

His phone buzzes. A text, from George: **alex whats going on?**  
**we already decided on backstrom weeks ago  
****dont worry ok call me**

Okay. He turns his phone off. Okay. 

Alex leans against a wall, and just. Breathes. Scratches at his neck the way he's been doing for weeks, like his bondmate was an giant mosquito bite. He can't go back to his team yet, not flayed open like this.

All of Alex's sleepless worry, his fear that he'd be forced to leave Riga without finding them, the maddening sense wherever he went that he was going in the wrong direction, the heightened awareness that drove him crazy, like the volume had turned up on a noisy radio channel that, though he strained to hear, he couldn't understand - it feels like he's discharging all of it in one great electric surge.

Nicklas Bäckström. Nicklas. NICKY. 

 _Nicky_ whose headaches have kept him up nights, _Nicky_ who makes him sneeze and sneeze in the spring without the accompanying stuffed nose and irritated eyes ever materialising, _Nicky_ whose fucking sex life nearly ruined Alex's good standing in the community more times than he can count, during bus rides, family dinners, and, on one nightmarish occasion, a dressing-down from his coach, _Nicky_ whose eternal undercurrent of worry Alex had to counterbalance with recklessness, _Nicky_ who sometimes feels so intensely happy that it wipes every thought from Alex's head and just makes him grin like a fool. Nicky, Nicky, _Nicky._ They made him watch West Side Story once as part of his quote unquote crash course on America, and he feels exactly like that guy who met his bondmate and couldn't stop dancing around and singing her name.

Nicky. A guy. Who cares? Not Alex. He remembers how it felt when Nicky hit him the second time, with his full strength, and shudders. 

"Alex?" 

He whips around. There he is: out of his carapace, he looks smaller but still unbelievably solid. Every curve of him outlined in his black underarmour. Hair a sweaty, curly disaster. Face blotchy and gleaming from exertion. He found Alex first. Helpless adoration fills him up and spills over like a fountain. "Nicky!"

Nicky's nose wrinkles a little at the nickname, but he doesn't really dislike it, he's nervous but excited and worried but curious, oh, what a marvel, finally getting to see all the faces of the thousand-faceted diamond that is his bondmate's mind. Alex can't believe it's real. He _needs_ to get his hands on him, right fucking now.

"Come," says Nicky, gesturing down the corridor without looking away from Alex with his solemn sea glass eyes. "I find a place."

 _Your voice, your actual voice,_ Alex sings jubilantly in his head as he follows Nicky's broad, rhythmically shifting back, crowding so close behind him that he almost trips them both. It gets him a wave of fond exasperation, wafting off Nicky like the smell of his sweat: Alex is going to make him laugh every day for the rest of their goddamn lives. God, this is an even better high than that time with the ecstasy in Montréal; this is better than _getting drafted_.

"You coming to play with me," he says as it occurs to him anew, astonished delight giving him goosebumps. "You coming to Washington."

Nicklas, leading them up a deserted flight of stairs, shoots him a look over one shoulder; Alex is utterly delighted to feel his blush spread half a second ahead of seeing it. "We will see," he demurs, and keeps climbing. 

What they'll see is how fast Alex can get him to moan his name, that's what they'll see. Where in the hell is Nicky taking him? When did he have time to map out this arena, to be scurrying through it like a badger in his burrow? 

The stairs turn onto a softly lit, carpeted corridor, lined with windows on one side that look out on the ice from above. **PRESS BOX** Alex reads on the nearest door, and feels his heart kick: if any journos see them together up here, where they have no business being -

"Here," says Nicky, and he ushers Alex through a door, locking it behind them, before letting out a long, controlled breath.

They're in a small, pastel-coloured room, with a lounge chair, a sink, a desk, and - miracle of miracles - a bed. A narrow, single bed, but still.

"It's for, uh," says Nicklas, reaching for words and gesturing, delightfully, with cupped hands at chest height, "women with babies, you know, milk. Taking milk." A hockey arena, and he managed to find the single room in the whole building with a bed and a door that locks. It's perfect; he's perfect. It's too much. Alex turns to him and holds out a hand.

Nicklas looks at it, at him, for a long moment before extending his own, and laying it in Alex's.

Alex knows he's a lot to deal with. A lot of body and personality, especially in a small space. A lot of reputation, too, lately. Nicky is no trembling waif, far from it, but he has boundaries. Lines in the sand. Times when he has shut Alex out, been angry with him for feelings Alex could no more control than Nicky could prevent his foul moods from bleeding over, but he tried; he tried to be better. Inasfar as they could, deaf and mute as they were, they have negotiated treaties.

Times, too, when they were moving as one body. Times when they loved each other on pure instinct.

 _Want me to?_ Alex thinks. And Nicky, in whatever wordless language they share, thinks _yeah, let's do it._

Alex twines their fingers together, pulls their hands up between them; then bends his head and kisses Nicky's knuckles, careful and slow.

He'd never seen or heard about a man doing this for another man before he came to the States, and even then it took furtive raids of his Blockbuster's arthouse section. Scenes he'd rewind by himself in the dark. When did he stop imagining himself kissing a woman like this? When did he start rehearsing a different scenario?

He startles when he feels Nicky's free hand grab his own. "My turn," he says, a little hoarse, and Nicky does it slightly differently, it's the soft inside of the wrist, with him. He patiently slides Alex's bracelets out of the way and brushes his chapped lips over the skin, the bones and veins right underneath. It ripples all the way through him, spark to dry kindle.

Some bonds are platonic. Friendly, close, brotherly. Not this one, thinks Alex, his stomach swooping like they're plunging on a rollercoaster. Not this one.

Nicky's _mouth_ , oh. Nicky's mouth has had tobacco in it recently, and a mouth guard, which under any other circumstance would be enough reason to put things on hold and get some chewing gum. But since that would require Alex to stop kissing him, it's impossible. Oh well. Alex sinks deeper, delirious, tangling one hand in Nicky's wet, grimy hair and working the other underneath his equally wet and grimy shirt. The thickness of his waist, the sheer strength of him there makes him moan, bewilderingly turned on by the promise of an equal and opposite force, a rock to break himself against. 

"Alex," gasps Nicky, shocked and breathy, tasting his name like first-time absinthe. Alex amends his earlier pledge to include making Nicky sound like that every day for the rest of their lives. He has his work cut out for him, jesus. Where to begin? He has limited time and zero supplies. How to give Nicky what he needs, what he wants from Alex in this moment?

He steers them over to the narrow little bed and lays him out, stretched underneath him. Alex's miracle, holy mother of god.

"Good?" he asks, just to be sure, just for the joy of asking him things with his mouth and see the answer in Nicky's face. "It feel good? You like? You want?"

Nicky smiles suddenly, a heartstopping wicked smile full of sharp little teeth. Reaches up to grab at Alex's gold chain and pulls, hard enough to force Alex down or risk it breaking.

"I like it," he says, in that weird Swedish lilt, like a promise and a threat. Then, complaining: "Pants, off," kicking at Alex's hockey pants with his heels, and he's absolutely right, so Alex kisses him while loosening the laces with one hand. Nicky pushes them down his hips and -

Swears in Swedish. "Sorry," Alex giggles as they both pull at the straps of his cup, get it out of the way, and _then_ , oh, _finally, fuck, fuckfuckfuck_ , he can push his cock against Nicky's hard abdomen and feel Nicky's cock against his own, and he can feel how good it feels for Nicky, and feel Nicky's thrill at how good it feels for Alex, and feel how Nicky feels how Alex feels how Nicky feels how good, how _ohmygodfucking good_ , _so good, so good, so_

"Uh, uh, uh," cries Nicky, needing just another second or two to get there. He's twined around Alex like an octopus, arms and legs squeezing him like a wrestler as he fucks his hips up into Alex's slick-drenched belly. Alex holds still for him, holds him close. He never wants to leave this, this perfect, beautiful moment in which he is at once sated and arching, flying, right there on the edge with Nicky, falling over with him.

"We should go," Nicky says, sounding and feeling regretful, after a while of lying there, kissing drowsily, one leg planted on the floor to stop them rolling off the bed. Alex makes a vague, acquiescent noise.

"I get your number," he remembers. He'll find his phone and make Nicky put his number in it. In a minute. 

"Are you coming to the draft?"

Alex kisses him. He feels like he has to kiss Nicky every time his mouth does something. Impractical. "Yes." He was going to, anyway, but now he's _really_ very much going to.

"Fourth overall," he promises, doling out one last kiss. "Washington Capitals. You and me, we gonna win Stanley Cup."

Nicky lies boneless beneath him, covered in their come, and looks at him like a great big blissfully petted-out cat, eyes slitted with lazy pleasure.

"Okay, why not," he says. And laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter dragged out of me by the hair courtesy of the song "Feel Good" (Gryffin, Illenium ft. Daya). I rewrote this bitch four times!!! three of which after I submitted it! It still doesn't feel 'done', but you get the general idea, I hope.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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